I will vote in favor of the whopping increase in borough taxes on cigarettes and other tobacco products for two reasons: The city can use the money and America's most elite addicts don't deserve a break.
Imagine what Juneau would be like if boozers could simply drop their beer cans and shot glasses in the gutter, or if needle freaks could flick disposable hypodermics out the window of their cars without regard to where, or on whom, they land.
I'm voting for the tax because cigarette smokers are, as a group, disgusting slobs. The downtown curbs are lined with cigarette butts. The butts who put them there seem unable to grasp the concept that littering laws apply to them just like the rest of us. If smokers can't buy as many cigarettes we should have fewer on the streets.
For the record, I don't smoke cigarettes and I don't know if the admittedly huge tax is "fair" or not. After watching the greed-driven Wall Street events and the various "bail-out" responses of the past year, and struggling with my own income taxes for decades, I've reached the conclusion that "fair" is a very relative, or perhaps irrelevant, concept in modern capitalist America.